There are all sorts of reasons to go to Bury St Edmunds. The ruins of the largest, wealthiest and, possibly, least-in-touch Monastery in England, a lovely market town and public tours of the massive Green King brewery. The country side around about is quite nice too.

However, what sort of claim can one make about quality time in a place unless it includes a decent meal? There is probably more than one answer to this and if any of you ever meet the astoundingly gorgeous companion who eats with me on my journeys, you may guess at some of them. I also draw your attention to the brewery tour at £5 per person which is excellent value.

Our culinary experience started a long time before we discovered the joys of the town. After a typical journey for that part of the UK, changing trains at Cambridge and travelling on what seemed to be a nasty world war two throw back service of an over-crowded, two carriage East Anglia train we arrived at 8pm, well after dark, at the Bury St Edmunds station on the outskirts of the town.

We had thought to write down the telephone number of what we hoped would be a great place to eat. Between intermittent signal failure for our mobile phones, we managed to make a booking for an hour later that evening. Continuing our struggle with Suffolk's interpretation of first world public infrastructure, we managed a second telephone call from the train to my second companion to assure them that dinner was going to be special that night.

The station is a bit out of town but it is a relatively easy walk into the city centre. Mostly guessing the right way to go, we made it to our rendezvous with our third party and headed into the twisty lanes where Maison Bleue is located.

The friendliness with which we were greeted was warm, the place was full, our bags were taken from us and we were led to the back of a bright, warm, modern restaurant and given time to gather our thoughts, peruse the menu and catch up with each other. One wrinkle in some of our dining experiences is that our second companion lives a strictly gluten free lifestyle. We were reassured within minutes that this would only limit the choice from most obvious things from the menu: essentially deep fried foods. Looking around us, deep fried fish in batter with mushy peas probably wasn't going to be among our initial choices anyway.

I am a big fan of lemon sole (as it is now known, plaice seeming to such an old fashioned word) and mine was whole and cooked to perfection. The fish does have a lemony flavour that, if cooked well, comes out beautifully. For people who are used to supermarket filleted fish, no matter how fresh it is claimed to be, the taste of properly cooked, truly fresh fish is eye opening. Almost as good, in fact, as fish barbecued near the jetty, cooked while you are putting your fishing rods away.

The others of my companions chose equally happily. Neither are lovers of fish bones and both chose fillets. As a result, their experience was quite different and they probably got to eat theirs faster too.

For vegetables we simply got some pots of lovely potato goo and greens for the table and helped ourselves. These were relished and scoffed down, if one can do both at the same time.

The wine list is French, as are many of the staff. When it comes to food and drink, this isn't a bad thing. Given two days following was Mothering Sunday we ensured we were booked in before we left so we could repeat the whole experience again.

Getting There: Centre of town (but first you must survive East Anglia Railways

Who should eat there: fish eating lovers

Dining Style: nicely done - like the food

Price £30 with a decent French white

Quality Scrummy

Would I go Back: East Anglia Railways may be all that lies between me and a lovely bit of fish

Phoenician Trader

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